Hi all,

I was wondering if it were possible to expand the options for the scratch pad? I participate in a couple of games where I play more than just one character in different campaigns that all run under the same roof. Given that I use the scratch pad as some sort of cloud, to keep notes available regardless from where I access the game, my notes can be extensive. If I keep character development ideas, notes on spells, plot hooks and plot developments, NPC info for several games in one scratchpad at the least it becomes chaotic at the worst it becomes too much for the current size.

It would be nice if the scratchpad could be tied to the character (like the sheet section), this would allow GMs to keep notes on important NPCs (and perhaps their lairs, ships or castles) readily available.

Just a thought, thanks for considering :)

Hi,

Not a bad idea, though I do have some questions to clarify and maybe a suggestion or two that might be helpful.

Does a character scratchpad stay with the character even during a transfer to a new player or does it wipe? (Current scratchpad behavior wipes all data once a player is removed, even if re-added at a later date)
Is the character scratchpad visible to the gm and owner of the character, or just the owner? (Current behavior is the scratchpad is owner only making it for private note taking)

I'd also ask if there a reason why the character sheet section would not work for keeping additional notes? With anchor links, I've found it pretty easy to jump to specific sections of the lengthier character sheets. I don't know about a limit, but it would seem ideal to save such details with the character sheet, and that is a per character basis that transfers to the current owner. Bonus is all game GMs can see it as well.

If you are a GM, I'd recommend using the game wiki feature. The cool thing is a GM can create pages that aren't readily apparent to the players. i.e. hidden pages that only those in possession of the link can get to. I have used this to good effect for some of my more complicated games. You can house plot notes, specific character details or anything else that you prefer. And the wiki doesn't have the 10,000 character limit of the scratchpad. If you are a player, just ask the GM to set up the game wiki and make a character specific page. If you're not concerned about the others seeing the notes, then they can put the links on the main game wiki landing page.

Not RPoL specific, but I've discovered freely available note taking apps work well for me. Especially games were I have a lot of information that needs to be organized. Most such apps can link relevant information together, which is perfect for GMs with a lot of notes. It certainly beats searching through PDFs or old game posts to recall a specific piece of information. Don't discount these tools as GM only, as a player I've used them for character notes as well.

Anchor links? Oooh, tell me more about how to use them.

Hi Drew,
thank you for taking this up.

Since scratchpads have been utterly private thus far, my suggestion would be to keep them that way as they might contain personal information that should not become 'public'. If the character is transferred the original player can copy and paste the information in a PM to the new player/GM if desired. If the player just dropped out from the game that info is lost.

Anchor links in the character sheet section might be a nice idea, but not everyone is capable of using them. Heck I've seen players who've had a hard time using formatting codes, so that might not be useful for everyone. Also, privacy is the key, there are some things I may not wish my GM to see (I've seen GMs with player characters using the knowledge for metagaming).

Thanks.

Would an alternative suggestion just be to increase the size of the scratchpad?

That would give you enough space to keep notes for as many characters as you like (within reason I suppose, but I've played games where I'm handling LOTS of characters and haven't ever come close to maxing out the scratchpad space, so I think you'd really have to try to blow it up if the available size doubled or tripled), but that would keep the scratchpad tied solely to the user for privacy.

I would be concerned that tying scratchpads to the character would mean they'd transfer to a new user if the character control was transferred - as PMs (outside of Access threads) and such already do.

For GMs a huge scratchpad is quite unnecessary as he can just create a private topic with as many messages as much he likes...
And for players they could ask for the same easily as long as they don't want it absolutely private (GMs can see everything else only the scratchpad is invisible for them)
So as long as we talk about character related information it could go easily to a private topic and it could be used a lot easier than one huge scratchpad.

Hi Anchor links just require two pieces of code:
<a href="#RACE">RACE</a>
[Anchor RACE]


The #xxx is the Anchor name. In this example #Race. The part between >yyy< is what is visible to the person, or in our example we simply repeat that this is the Race anchor. Though you could say species, ancestry or anything else.

The second is the anchor. It's a very simple piece of code Anchor followed by the anchor name without the hashtag '#'. In my browser it usually displays three or four lines below the anchor, so you'll have to adjust accordingly, but it works great otherwise. Some of the advanced character sheets use links, you can find them in the character sheet repository under the Heaven Gaming Resources forum.


This is what one of my sheet headers looks like, and you can remove/add as many of these as you like. Pro-tip, I edit the character sheets in a text editor. Makes for easier use of the tools, and then you have a copy of the character stored on your workstation/laptop.


And here is the code for ease of reference:

<center><large><b><a href="#ABILITY">ABILITIES</a> | <a href="#CP">CHARACTER POINTS</a> | <a href="#CPE">CLASS</a> | <a href="#COMBAT">COMBAT</a>
<a href="#BIO">BIO</a> | <a href="#MAGIC">MAGIC</a> | <a href="#RACE">RACE</a> | <a href="#SAVES">SAVES</a> | <a href="#SKILLS">SKILLS</a>
<a href="#Language">LANGUAGE</a> | <a href="#GEAR">GEAR/ITEMS</a> | <a href="#HISTORY">HISTORY</a>
</b></large></center>

Thanks heaps for this. I know it seems stupid, but it took me a long time to decipher how to use it. The [Anchor] part really passed me by!